You have to keep working all the time

Burnley travel to Bournemouth as once again our current manager takes on his predecessor, a game now between the Premier League’s two longest serving managers . Eddie Howe has been back at Bournemouth for thirteen days longer than Sean Dyche has been at Burnley and that is three years longer than the next in the list; that’s Jürgen Klopp who has been at Liverpool since October 2015.

Howe saw his side end a difficult run a week ago with a 1-0 win at Chelsea just as we did with our home win against Newcastle by the same score. He said: “When you win you naturally get a bounce, the players feel better about themselves, and it’s the same for supporters who will have had a lift.

“It’s key now that we push that on and get a good result against Burnley. They’re a team that work incredibly hard, they’re a very effective team and we’re going to have to make sure that we’re good. We’ll need all the qualities that we showed against Chelsea, to show them again against Burnley.”

Sean Dyche said ahead of the game: “Runs of form can come and go quickly. Before you know if you can go three or four deep without a win. It’s always a balance to how you’re viewing each game and also the understanding of the bigger picture of the season.

“It is likely that teams like ourselves do have some bumps in the road. One of the biggest things is how quickly you can deal with any disappointments that come your way. Experience helps and the balance that comes when you do win games. It doesn’t guarantee the next one. You’ve got to be realistic.

“We had a strong performance against Newcastle but that doesn’t guarantee the next one. The players are equally wise enough to know you have to keep working all the time and keep consistency high to get more points on the table.”

As is always the case when we play Bournemouth, it seems, there are always questions posed of the managers about each other. Asked about similarities between him and Howe, Dyche said: “I don’t think we are that similar as people. I think we have a lot of respect for the job and a lot of respect for each other.

“They’ve put a reasonable amount of money into what they do there, we probably less so, but similar clubs in a belief in what they do. I just think any manager whose done what he’s done has earned the right to be respected and he’s certainly respected by me, that’s for sure.”